What do the avatars in the topic list mean?

Bug: Cannot determine OP or Last Poster from home screenExpectation: A thread should state, not perhaps in this wording, "Thread title - started by Username on yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm". So I can see at a glance who started what and when. The same should be for the last poster. "Last reply by Username on yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm". Again, like forums are supposed to behave. Instead, there's a random assortment of avatars that are either broken images or too small to make out, in a random order with no rhyme or reason as to what those icons are. There is no textual information. There is no way of knowing when the things was posted except for the users "x hours ago".Solution: Put this information on the thread page.

Instead, there's a random assortment of avatars that are either broken images or too small to make out, in a random order with no rhyme or reason as to what those icons are. There is no textual information.

Hover over them (unless you're on a mobile device for which hover is not a thing, sorry). Tooltips: Leftmost avatar/broken image: OP. 2nd avatar: most frequent contributor. Other avatars: other frequent contributors. Avatar with blue border: most recent poster.

It's there, but you have to mouse-over the avatars (yeah not great for usability, but the info is at least there). Which is useful iff:
Nobody ever changes avatars
You don't use Ghostery to block Grava

Hover over them (unless you're on a mobile device for which hover is not a thing, sorry). Tooltips: Leftmost avatar/broken image: OP. 2nd avatar: most frequent contributor. Other avatars: other frequent contributors. Avatar with blue border: most recent poster.

So all I have to do is memorize three positional and one color dependent visual cues, instead of having text information to read. USABILITY. As long as I remember what each of the random assortment of tiles means, and hope that no one trolls the forum by making their avatar image blue bordered, and as long as the order never changes (which I'll never know because there's no text clues), and as long as I take time to stop and hover over every image, and as long as the images are never broken or 404'd, it'll work some of the time.

To illustrate my point, here's a screenshot. I didn't include the header that has the "OP, most freq, latest" because there isn't one:

(let's see if Discourse can onebox imgur)

Okay, folks, thread one, who is the OP? Who are the #1 and #3 most frequent contributors?

How many unique users with grey avatars posted in threads #2, #3?

Is Morbs' avatar blue bordered, or is that a special recognition? You can cheat by looking at thread #4... unless you have a monitor where it is literally impossible to distinguish between Very Light Blue and white, in which case the only reason I see the blue border at all is because the image is on my second monitor with better contrast.

Why does thread #6 have fewer avatars than the others? Is it because only four people have posted in it instead of the five from the other threads? If so, does that mean this is a list of the most recent posters? If so, in what order are they presented? Why is it inconstant?

Finally: Why does this look like someone's Myspace guestbook/friends list instead of a forum from 2014?

So all I have to do is memorize three positional and one color dependent visual cues, instead of having text information to read. USABILITY. As long as I remember what each of the random assortment of tiles means, and hope that no one trolls the forum by making their avatar image blue bordered, and as long as the order never changes (which I'll never know because there's no text clues), and as long as I take time to stop and hover over every image, and as long as the images are never broken or 404'd, it'll work some of the time.

Dude, you get used to it. I'll admit, it's not instantly intuitive, but after a couple of hours I got how the icons on the threads list worked--first icon OP, blue-highlighted icon is last post.

Also, clicking my username in this thread just reloads this thread. Most useless hyperlink ever.

Huh.. for me it opens a pop-over showing some basic stats about you and some links, like to your profile page. It also shows the larger avatar, which looks kind of janky. You can see it on your profile page: